The Ars Technica readership generally prides itself on wanting to know the technical details behind products, and finding these details generally increases the average Ars reader's desire for a product. But not everybody falls into this information-loving category; for some, learning more about a product actually makes them desire it less. Now, researchers have come up with an explanation for these information foes: the added details expose their existing understanding as shallow, which leaves them disappointed.

The authors of the new study posit that the difference between these two types of consumers comes down to their taste for understanding things. There's a commonly used test, called the cognitive reflection test (CRT), that provides a measure of how much mental energy people tend to put into things. It measures this by providing a series of questions with obvious, intuitive answers that are actually wrong. To recognize that your intuitions are leading you astray, you have to stop and take the time to think about your answer a bit. By measuring the frequency with which people pick the intuitive answer, the test provides a measure of their tendency to think carefully.

The authors hypothesized that this desire to think things through would correlate with a consumer's desire for information about a product. Those with a low CRT score wouldn't care much about how a product worked, while those with what they termed a "need for cognition" would put effort into understand what they were buying.

So the authors came up with a number of products and created descriptions for each that varied greatly in their details. In describing a laundry detergent, their descriptions ranged from "Contains natural enzymes" to "The detergent has enzymes. Grains made of alcalase and esperase protein molecules are dissolved in the detergent, thereby making clothes cleaner."

They then recruited participants through Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, and asked them to rate the amount of detail in the explanations, as well as their understanding of the product. Everyone agreed that the authors intent with the different descriptions worked out: the detailed ones provided far more information than the simple ones. But the value of the explanations differed. Those with low cognitive reflection scores felt their understanding was sufficient with the minimalist information—any more and their sense of fluency dropped. Those who scored highly on the CRT showed a linear increase, where more details meant greater understanding.

As it turned out, both groups liked having the sense they understood something. That meant that reflective people enjoyed the more complex explanations, while those for whom thinking things through had a lower appeal ended up preferring the shallow explanation.

In a separate experiment, the authors found that consumers would be willing to pay more for a premium product, but only if the explanation for its premium qualities made sense to them. Again, reflective people were more willing to pay extra if they got a detailed explanation, while the less reflective people liked the simple explanation best. In fact, for the second group, willingness to spring for a premium product dropped as the explanations got more complex.

For their final test, the authors wanted to understand why the less cognitively inclined preferred simple explanations. Is it that they don't force them to think, or that a more complex explanation reveals that they don't really understand things? To find out, they showed the participants a series of actual products and asked them what they'd be willing to pay. Then they asked for a detailed, step-by-step explanation for how the product worked. If a participant had an illusion of understanding, this should shatter it. They were then asked again how much they were willing to pay for it.

For people who scored well on the cognitive reflection test, having to go through the explanation step-by-step didn't change their self-reported level of understanding. But it made them much more willing to pay. The low scorers exhibited a bit of a Dunning-Kruger effect, in that they rated their understanding highly before being asked to explain things, after which it dropped significantly. When their understanding declined, they were much less willing to pay for things.

(The authors tripped themselves up a bit by turning to real products. Some of these had advertising copy that explained how the products acted in terms that nobody could understand, even the more cognitively inclined. It's not clear whether their descriptions were poorly written or the marketers were actually just making things up.)

In any case, the authors conclude that consumers' cognitive tendencies play a strong role in determining how they will respond to advertising. For those with a need to know, the more details, the better (assuming the details make sense, at least). There's an entirely separate population which, if given the details, will end up less likely to purchase a product.

Although the study doesn't extend beyond marketing materials, there seems to be a good chance that these tendencies apply to the availability of information on a product in general. Certainly within the computing scene, there are people who want to build their own machines and compile their own source code, while others are happy to have a black box that just gets the job done.

My roommate's teen unfortunately developed a chemical dependency problem and for the past few years all I heard from her is her telling her mom to buy her an an iPhone. She's finally accepted treatment and has been sober a few months now. She said something the other day that left her mother and I flabbergasted... She asked for a SGS3.

Conde Nast has the perfect test group right here, Arstechnica. Tailor the stories and see what happens. Heck, maybe we can even find out if it changes with age and responsibility (more responsibilities, less time).

"There's a commonly used test, called the cognitive reflection test (CRT), that provides a measure of how much mental energy people tend to put into things. It measures this by providing a series of questions with obvious, intuitive answers that are actually wrong. To recognize that your intuitions are leading you astray, you have to stop and take the time to think about your answer a bit."

You also have to give a shit about the questions in the first place. If someone asked me the difference between a name brand bleach and a generic i would likely say "not much", not because i am unwilling to put forward mental energy in general, but im not going to waste my time pondering questions for which i have no interest.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

It might be more correct to say that Android seems to aim to appeal to people who want to understand things and Apple seems to aim for appealing to people who want to need to know as little as possible. (hence the common "it just works" refrain)

Considering that literally half of the world is less intelligent than the most mentally average person you can imagine it's not hard to understand why needing to understand as little as possible would seem appealing to so many people.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

For some it does... But there are plenty of us on Ars who like Apple products for things well beyond how shiny it is (in fact I hate glossy screens and special ordered matte on my MBP). But we don't tend to buy them until we have seen a teardown of every last obscure piece and enjoy the that our macs have that arcane terminal app. But we are are likely to appreciate Android products too... and often own both.

Why the heck does it suddenly have to be an android versus apple "thingie".

That would help explain a lot of behavior I see where people tend to NOT want a real explination of things.

I tended to call them the one liners (as in give me one line about why I should want it).

Me, the short description isn't sufficient. I want to know the full specs, investigate it, etc, etc before I am comfortable choosing a product. I am the guy that pours over ingredient labels in the groccery store, reads over the labels on my beer in the liquor store and tend to ask the people who work their their recommendations and why, read the tech specs of the 12 different cars I am thinking of, then read some reviews of them and THEN go for a test drive, etc.

Oh, and I use an iPhone. That was only after doing a lot of research though and realizing it would handle what I needed just fine and had some perks Android phones didn't have. With a phone, everything I wanted could be found within the walled garden (and that walled garden tends to be a lot nicer and bigger than Androids semi-open gardens).

Does a high CRT score directly correlate with making a "good" purchase? I would think that knowing more about a product and taking time to think about what the advertising says would prevent getting scammed by the company selling the product.

If it does correlate, and assuming that major companies have intelligent advertisers, the company with the least technical details in their advertisements would probably have the least technically interested consumers.

Although, if most consumers don't want to know the details then every advertisement should look about the same.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

It might be more correct to say that Android seems to aim to appeal to people who want to understand things and Apple seems to aim for appealing to people who want to need to know as little as possible. (hence the common "it just works" refrain)

Considering that literally half of the world is less intelligent than the most mentally average person you can imagine it's not hard to understand why needing to understand as little as possible would seem appealing to so many people.

If you are an accountant, or an opera singer, or, i dont know, an architect, then what great value to you get out of knowing how your smart phone works? I think ones desire to 'understand' a gadget has little to do with ones intelligence.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

It might be more correct to say that Android seems to aim to appeal to people who want to understand things and Apple seems to aim for appealing to people who want to need to know as little as possible. (hence the common "it just works" refrain)

Considering that literally half of the world is less intelligent than the most mentally average person you can imagine it's not hard to understand why needing to understand as little as possible would seem appealing to so many people.

I was thinking that Apples success with their premium products is because they can provide a simple explanation for the premium : thinness, design, app-store, as well as the just-works. Where-as Android typically gets possibly too-much technical detail (screen-size, vendor, Ice-Cream-vs-Jelly-Bean) etc.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

This is the perfect example of the "reality distortion field" - the lie many Android users tell themselves to explain why iPhones are popular: it must because their users are unthinking idiots!

Not, you know, that the iPhone is a great product that makes most of its users happy.

I have a strong dislike of forced obsolescence, which is part and parcel of the Apple business model. When a perfectly good piece of equipment is forced into an unusable state by an update, then I see no reason to continue working with the company that made the hardware or the software. I also view people who allow themselves to be used this way as gullible, if not downright "unthinking idiots". That last part is just a negative stereotype I have based on my own experiences, though.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

Android generally allows the user to pull back the curtain and iOS does not. For folks who fetishize information being able to peak inside seems like a huge value. For others the visible internals look like a sloppy mess (something I have heard iOS devotees say about android).

I suspect that the way you see it has a lot to do with whether what you see behind the curtain makes sense to you, if it is confusing or highlights your ignorance you are likely to recoil. That is not to say that all iOS users are computing ignorant, only that android would likely be devalued for those who lack an interest in the inner workings.

Um, not sure how "intelligence" fits in, commenters. A person can be intelligent and know, for example, that all bleach is more or less the same, and not care to spend time wading through product details in order to make a purchasing decision. Similarly, a relatively unintelligent person could spend all day reading details about something an -still- never understand it, but might feel better for having done some homework before buying.

This story seems to be about cognitive load, concern for detail, and if nothing else, consumer indifference.

The findings aren't surprising from a marketer perspective. It's not about what people -are-, it's how people -feel-. And according to this article, people lose interest when they start to -feel- dumb, whether they are or not.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

It might be more correct to say that Android seems to aim to appeal to people who want to understand things and Apple seems to aim for appealing to people who want to need to know as little as possible. (hence the common "it just works" refrain)

Considering that literally half of the world is less intelligent than the most mentally average person you can imagine it's not hard to understand why needing to understand as little as possible would seem appealing to so many people.

If you are an accountant, or an opera singer, or, i dont know, an architect, then what great value to you get out of knowing how your smart phone works? I think ones desire to 'understand' a gadget has little to do with ones intelligence.

The same region of the brain controls learning capacity and curiosity.

The two are linked - ignore it if you like, but those who are naturally unintelligent are also generally less curious.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

I don't think that's even remotely true. There are easily as many low-information Android purchasers out there as low-information iPhone purchasers. And just because you like your things to "just work" in the iPhone world, doesn't mean you didn't do your research before coming to the conclusion that a walled garden was the best use-case for you.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

It might be more correct to say that Android seems to aim to appeal to people who want to understand things and Apple seems to aim for appealing to people who want to need to know as little as possible. (hence the common "it just works" refrain)

Considering that literally half of the world is less intelligent than the most mentally average person you can imagine it's not hard to understand why needing to understand as little as possible would seem appealing to so many people.

If you are an accountant, or an opera singer, or, i dont know, an architect, then what great value to you get out of knowing how your smart phone works? I think ones desire to 'understand' a gadget has little to do with ones intelligence.

The same region of the brain controls learning capacity and curiosity.

The two are linked - ignore it if you like, but those who are naturally unintelligent are also generally less curious.

Well, if its the same region of the brain, then that proves it! Id say the more likely answer is that a certain class of people would like to feel superior to others and so they hold up whatever characteristics they feel they possess as some useful metric of intelligence.

I'm an analyzer. I'm that guy who goes into the car dealer already knowing exactly what I want (or at least what I want to look at in person closer) because I've already done my research, and often know more than the salesman off the top of my head. Drives them batty. I love learning details about WHY I should use Subaru or Idemitsu transmission fluid in my new Subaru over anything else. Or understanding WHY the thing burns through a quart every 7500k between oil changes. Or what "synthetic" oil really is.

Recently I've been going nuts now that I have a 7 month old child. I don't have the time to analyze everything. I have had to learn how to prioritize the research on products that actually matter long term. I get twitchy a lot these days...

Does a high CRT score directly correlate with making a "good" purchase? I would think that knowing more about a product and taking time to think about what the advertising says would prevent getting scammed by the company selling the product. <snip>

My wife would argue that it would correlate to NO purchase. She thinks I spend too much time researching things and end up deciding none are good enough or that they are too risky for the price. Obviously I don't think she pays enough attention to what she buys and wastes too much. The truth is, we both make good and bad decisions. We just make them differently.

Broadly speaking, without reading the study itself, this approach seems biased towards intellectualization (like a lot of academic material is). There's some assumption that looking at more facts or 'thinking harder' about a subject is better.

But, I don't see any proof that an intellectual decision is always better than an intuitive one, or an emotional one. Of course we can think of decisions in financial or legal aspects of your life, where it helps to put at least some time into thinking and facts, but we can also come up with situations where people followed logic and expert advice, and things turned out badly for them anyway. In areas such as medicine, studies show having too many experts working on you, and looking at things too deeply will often result in a poorer level of health than people who get the average level of care.

Briefly, we're emotional, intuitive, AND rational beings, and there's nothing wrong with leaning on one of those more than the other if that's the way you live. There's no logical proof that being logical is THE way to live your life.

This has to be the nicest way of saying "stupid people" that I've ever seen. The best part about it is that the people it refers to won't spend enough time thinking about it to even realize that they are being insulted.

Why does the "half the world is below-average intelligence" meme refuse to die?

Ten Ars Commenters are in a room. One has an IQ of 70 (he has a flip phone). One has an IQ of 170 (he ALSO has a flip phone). The rest all have an IQ of 120, and have either Androids or iPhones. The average IQ in this room is 120. How many are below average?

What you're describing is a problem in granularity. IQ isn't a perfect metric, but it is absolutely certain that intelligence varies throughout the population. In a quite literal sense there is a center point somewhere - even if it's not measurable by any metric we posses - and half of all humanity lies on the lower side of it.

This is a brilliant breakdown of why both Apple and Android products sell well:

Android products cater to people who want to understand what they're buying and why.

Apple products cater to people that just want something shiny without thinking about it.

I think it would be more accurate to state that this describes "fanboys" on both sides of the aisle. These are generally less cognitively inclined people, such as yourself, who choose to reside in the safety of their unproven knowledge that the opposing product is of no value. The more cognitively inclined tend to openly learn about both products and realize that there are pros and cons to each of them. This conclusion doesn't drive the enthusiasm so much as those with unfounded certainty, and therefore less frequently gives them cause them to espouse their belief on internet forums. This explains why such forums and comment sections are most commonly overrun by the vocal and cognitively disinclined.

Broadly speaking, without reading the study itself, this approach seems biased towards intellectualization (like a lot of academic material is). There's some assumption that looking at more facts or 'thinking harder' about a subject is better.

But, I don't see any proof that an intellectual decision is always better than an intuitive one, or an emotional one. Of course we can think of decisions in financial or legal aspects of your life, where it helps to put at least some time into thinking and facts, but we can also come up with situations where people followed logic and expert advice, and things turned out badly for them anyway. In areas such as medicine, studies show having too many experts working on you, and looking at things too deeply will often result in a poorer level of health than people who get the average level of care.

Briefly, we're emotional, intuitive, AND rational beings, and there's nothing wrong with leaning on one of those more than the other if that's the way you live. There's no logical proof that being logical is THE way to live your life.

Well said! If you feel you've derived real value from your purchase then who cares if its the 'best', or you thought a lot about it? Apparently, people who buy BMW's put a high value on being able to say 'German engineering' all the time and for them, thats worth paying a premium for, and who am I to argue?

And what about low cost items? Why even think about which bar of soap is the best? Just buy one, and if you dont like it, pitch it. Its too cheap to even worry about.

Why does the "half the world is below-average intelligence" meme refuse to die?

Ten Ars Commenters are in a room. One has an IQ of 70 (he has a flip phone). One has an IQ of 170 (he ALSO has a flip phone). The rest all have an IQ of 120, and have either Androids or iPhones. The average IQ in this room is 120. How many are below average?

They're assuming a normal distribution. However unrealistic it may be, it is more realistic than your example. That's like me saying "Well if people could swap brains and bodies, then the history of your body would have no bearing on your intellectual capacity or moral character!"

This is precisely why internet advertising is inherently better than broadcast. A smart PR campaign will produce a spectrum of ads, and not just banner or text ads, but the whole arsenal of PR goodies. We all have google profiles associated with us, and inferring a CRT score shouldn't be that difficult. There's no reason I should see the same ads as a high school dropout or a middle manager.

Clearly the intent of the article was to draw a parallel to apple vs xyz. The RDF in the title is clickbait (i bit...hey the article was interesting too!)

Since comments are gravitating to ios / android:

I happen to like to customize my phone - so I chose android since it suits me better. While some people may take an ignorance is bliss standpoint, I would argue that a good portion of those choosing ios do so because it simply suits their needs and desires more.

Does a lack of specific detailed information make apple devices seem more 'magical' to consumers, maybe. They might be playing the field right (according to this article), but there are plenty of tech savvy people who happy because the environment does what they want out of the box.